http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/asia/23pew.html?sq=Pew&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=print
WASHINGTON — Buoyed by years of extraordinary growth and the promise of the Olympic Games, the Chinese people hold strikingly positive views of their national economy and the direction their country is heading, ranking first in both measures among 24 countries recently surveyed, the Pew Research Center said Tuesday.
China “is clearly a nation that sees itself as ascendant, and that leads to tremendous satisfaction with the way things are going nationwide, even though the people are still struggling on an individual level,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.
Eighty-six percent of Chinese people surveyed said they were content with the country’s direction, up from 48 percent in 2002. The next highest country, Australia, was 25 percentage points lower, at 61 percent. And 82 percent of Chinese were satisfied with their national economy, up from 52 percent.
By comparison, only 23 percent of people surveyed from the United States said they were satisfied with their country’s direction and only 20 percent said the American economy was good.
Russians were the third most-satisfied people with their country’s direction, at 54 percent, despite Western concerns about authoritarian trends in the country.
Except for Spain, which placed fourth at 50 percent, the people of major European countries were far from content. Only about 3 in 10 British, French and Germans expressed satisfaction with the direction of their nations.
The survey, part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, did find rising concern in China about the costs of rapid growth. The biggest concern Chinese respondents expressed was rising prices. Corruption and environmental degradation also worried most Chinese people.
The Chinese respondents — surveyed after the onset of civil unrest over Tibet but before the May 12 earthquake in southwestern China — were somewhat less satisfied with their own lives than with national conditions. Most Chinese “feel a genuine sense of great pride in what has been achieved,” said Melissa Murphy, a China specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The roaring Chinese economy sent food prices up by 22 percent in April, compared with a year before, and 96 percent of the Chinese surveyed cited rising prices as their leading concern. Among their other concerns: the gap between rich and poor (89 percent), corrupt officials (78 percent), air pollution (74 percent), unemployment (68 percent) and water pollution (66 percent).
Sixty-five percent of the Chinese said the government was doing a good job on the issues most important to them, though support was somewhat less in the western and central provinces, which have not enjoyed the rapid growth of eastern regions.
Amid heightened scrutiny over flawed or contaminated Chinese exports, the survey provided a reminder that the country’s largely state-controlled news media still keep a lid on news of negative developments.
Only 1 percent of Chinese respondents said they had heard a lot about problems with Chinese-made products.
Thirty-four percent of those surveyed, up from 25 percent in 2006, said people in China were paying too much attention to the Games. That feeling was even stronger in Beijing, expressed by nearly half of the city’s residents.
But optimism that the Games would improve China’s image was strong, apparently little affected by the pro-Tibet and anti-China protests around the globe surrounding the torch relay.
Ms. Murphy, noting that 96 percent of respondents said they believed China’s hosting of the Games would prove successful, said, “It might have some officials in Beijing worried about the consequences if the Games are not.”
As a sense of self-confidence grows in China, some appear to see the English-speaking world as of relatively declining importance. While 77 percent agreed that “children need to learn English to succeed in the world today,” this was down from 92 percent in 2002.
The poll was based on 3,212 face-to-face interviews conducted in 16 dialects from March 28 to April 19 across China, though disproportionately in urban areas. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus two percentage points. Sample sizes and error margins in the other countries varied.
David Barboza contributed reporting from Beijing.